A NATION AT WAR: THE DEFENSE SECRETARY

By TODD S. PURDUM

Published: March 30, 2003

WASHINGTON, March 29—
In the best of times, Donald H. Rumsfeld parried questions from the Pentagon press corps in the same imperious way Professor Kingsfield dismissed his class of rookie contract law students in ''The Paper Chase.''

But as the public face of a nation at war -- and a war not progressing as smoothly as some had predicted -- Mr. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, has assumed an even crustier, testier tone in defending his war plan from public criticism and second thoughts from even some of his own commanders.

During the war in Afghanistan, Mr. Rumsfeld's briefing style and command of battlefield details won accolades. In recent days, as he faced an avalanche of skepticism from reporters about how well the war was going and whether he had miscalculated Iraqi resistance and the force needed to conquer Saddam Hussein, his brio has at times given way to defensiveness.

On Tuesday, irked at a flood of overlapping, interrupting interrogation, the secretary held up his hand and actually hissed, ''Shhhh!''

Several days later, he seemed downright irascible in an exchange with a veteran television correspondent.

''Oh, my goodness!'' the secretary exclaimed midway through his Friday afternoon briefing, his patented squint congealing into an astonished scowl.

Jim Miklaszewski, the NBC News Pentagon correspondent, had just asked Mr. Rumsfeld about the apparent disparity in the ratio of dead to wounded American troops in Iraq, and whether there was any official effort to ''underreport casualties from the battlefield.''

Mr. Rumsfeld continued in a tone of both wounded dignity and mounting annoyance, saying, ''Now you know that wouldn't be the case.''

''There's no -- no one in the government, here or on the ground, is going to underreport what's happening,'' he said. ''That's just terrible to think that. Even to suggest it is outrageous. Most certainly not! The facts are reported.''

''Oh, my goodness!'' to ''Most certainly not!'' in 15 seconds flat is an even faster trajectory for the man whose famous impatience with news media questions he views as silly or tiresome has been parodied on ''Saturday Night Live.''

The bantam Mr. Rumsfeld still dominates the Pentagon's cramped, blue-curtained briefing room from his double-wide lectern, even as Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, towers a head taller beside him.

Halfway through his answer about casualty figures, Mr. Rumsfeld pounded his hand on his lectern, slicing the air like a knife. ''When people are killed, they're killed and we face it,'' he said. ''When people are wounded, we say so. When people are missing, and we know they're missing, we say so. And when we're wrong and they wander back into camp, as several have recently, having been lost or with other units, we say so. Absolutely not!''

Mr. Rumsfeld's briefing style can have the appearance of being more candid and less canned than the more cautious approaches of other administration officials when they are dealing with reporters.

In an exchange on Friday with ABC's John McWethy, the secretary denied being involved in administration efforts to shape perceptions of how the war was progressing.

Asked by Mr. McWethy if he supported plain-spoken assessments from his battlefield commanders, even if they ''may not necessarily agree with the perception that the administration has,'' Mr. Rumsfeld interrupted.

''Look,'' he said, ''the administration does not have a perception. I have a perception. General Myers has a perception, and we say what we think. There's not some coordinated perception that's being peddled.''

Still, it just so happened that Mr. Rumsfeld and the White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, each separately but repeatedly referred that day to Iraqi forces loyal to Mr. Hussein as ''death squads,'' willing to execute Iraqi army regulars who refused to fight.

Mr. Rumsfeld himself is often the first to acknowledge that he is not telling all he knows. Asked by a reporter outside a House appropriations subcomittee hearing on Thursday if he could provide any information about reports that military equipment was being shipped into Iraq from Syria, Mr. Rumsfeld replied: ''I could, but I'm not going to.''

In his briefing on Friday, Mr. Rumsfeld disclosed that such shipments included night-vision goggles, and added, ''We consider such trafficking as hostile acts and will hold the Syrian government accountable.'' Asked a few minutes later if he was threatening military action against Syria, Mr. Rumsfeld replied: ''I'm saying exactly what I said. It was carefully phrased.''

Mr. Rumsfeld works standing up at a tall desk in his office, and never seems quite comfortable sitting down. Told that the subcommittee hearing on Thursday afternoon would be delayed to accommodate a vote on the House floor, Mr. Rumsfeld, who had already spent the morning testifying to senators, squinted at his watch.

''Fifteen minutes?'' he asked, not pleased. ''I think I'll take a little walk. I've been sitting down all day.'' When he finally took the witness chair, he hunched forward sharply, his feet curled behind him in slip-on black dress shoes, toes bent to the floor like a runner at the blocks.

Bouncing on the balls of his feet at his lectern in the Pentagon's briefing room, Mr. Rumsfeld, who once did one-armed push-ups for cash as a Princeton student, is in his natural element. He refers to Iraqis who would fight to the finish as ''dead-enders.'' He says coalition forces enjoy not air superiority but ''air dominance.'' If Iraqi paramilitaries wish ''to die for Saddam Hussein,'' he says, ''they will be accommodated.''

On Friday when Jamie McIntyre of CNN wondered whether it was ''possible that you've miscalculated the desire of the Iraqi people to be liberated by an outside force,'' Mr. Rumsfeld sounded like a disappointed father.

''Jamie, don't you think it's a little premature?'' he replied.

''We'll know the answer to that,'' Mr. Rumsfeld said. ''As portions of the country are liberated, we'll have people on the ground, embedded with our forces, who have a chance to see what happens and see how they feel about it. Why do we want to guess?''

A few minutes later, when Mr. McIntyre's CNN colleague Barbara Starr asked how, if ''you don't deem it important to know the mood of the Iraqi people,'' he could understand the military challenges of operating in Baghdad, Mr. Rumsfeld said: ''I didn't say it wasn't important to know. I said it wasn't knowable.''

Photos: Mr. Rumsfeld met with former defense secretaries, including William S. Cohen and James R. Schlesinger, at a Pentagon luncheon last week. Mr. Rumsfeld has faced skepticism and criticism in defending his war plan. (Stephen Crowley/The New York Times); Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had displayed a testier tone in news briefings since the war began. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)